Dauphin Island likely to breach in next major hurricane, says engineer

DAUPHIN ISLAND, Alabama -- A massive sand relocation project during the early days of the Gulf oil spill left one of the most populated sections of Dauphin Island as the most likely place for a breach to form during a hurricane, according to a prominent coastal engineer.

Staring at an aerial photograph made in March, Scott Douglass, a University of South Alabama coastal engineering professor, jabbed his finger at a spot just west of the island’s elementary school and fishing pier.

“That is where the next breach will occur,” Douglass said. “And it will happen because of all that sand they removed.”

“Scott looks at that as weakening the island. Of course, we all know why we did it,” Collier said “At that time, we were reacting to the spill and the fact that we were in the bull’s eye. We were working with the state and the governor to protect the environment as best we could."

Beach houses visible near likely breach point

View full sizeA section of the berm as seen Sunday, July 25, 2010, on Dauphin Island, Alabama . (Press-Register/Bill Starling)

In the aerial photo, lots of beach houses are visible near the likely breach point Douglass indicated. Also visible are dozens of large, rectangular ponds just north of Bienville Boulevard, the main thoroughfare on the island’s west end.

The ponds are borrow pits — the holes left from digging sand to build a series of large sand dunes in the panicked days before oil began washing ashore. The plan was to have two parallel rows of dunes, one next to the Gulf beach and one next to Bienville Boulevard, to block oil from washing across the low-lying island.

Some of the ponds are 8 feet deep and hundreds of feet long. Douglass called the area around the 2400 block of Bienville, where the largest borrow ponds are located, “the weak spot.”

He has told town officials that a breach there would destroy the road, homes, plus sewer and power lines in a two-mile-wide stretch.

“I think it is much more vulnerable than it was before. Islands breach where they are lower and where they are thinner. We’ve taken a third of the island and made it thinner and lower,” Douglass said. “That is where the breach will happen. It’s just a matter of time.”

Nautical charts reflect numerous breaches of the island during the last 200 years, some taking decades to fill in.

Most recently, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 opened a 15-foot-deep, mile-wide pass just west of the last houses on the island. It has since been filled in with tens of thousands of pounds of rock. A look at the aerial image indicates that a breach on the scale of the Katrina cut could consume more than 100 houses.

At first, Collier said, sand for the barriers was trucked in from pits on the mainland, but it quickly became clear that hauling sand was taking too long and costing too much.

'The quickest way to get it done'

“Taking sand from the island was the quickest way to get it done,” he said. “The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service came out and told us where we could take sand from, and which areas we had to avoid to protect nesting birds. We were trying to keep oil from washing across the entire island.”

Bruce Jones, president of the island Property Owners Association, said some people refused to allow the heavy equipment crews to remove sand from their properties. Most of the areas where sand was removed, he said, were along the Mississippi Sound, where sand had been deposited by previous hurricanes. Jones did not allow sand to be removed from the lots he owns on the West End, he said.

“It’s done. It was done for a good reason. We needed sand. Unfortunately, it has left the island in a weaker state,” Jones said. “You can look back and decide you could have done it differently or done it better, but I don’t fault the people who were getting those emergency repairs done. It highlights the need for a major sand restoration project.”

Douglass agreed. Working on behalf of the island, he has proposed a massive sand restoration project that would cost somewhere between $30 million and $70 million and create a beach hundreds of feet wider than it is now.

Douglass predicted that some will advocate filling in the ponds to shore up the island instead of rebuilding the beach.

“That’s not the right idea. Let’s strengthen the island instead of fill in those holes. Put sand in front of the island and make it stronger,” Douglass said. “In May of last year, when we had oil coming toward Alabama, there was water washing across the island. They literally were driving in the water to bring that sand in. That tells you that spot was already too low.”

Collier said he hoped that some of the $100 million in oil spill fine money recently promised to Alabama for environmental projects would be used to shore up the island.

“People think this is just about protecting Dauphin Island. It’s not. All the projects, making oyster reefs, working on grass beds, whatever, are good projects. They put people to work,” Collier said.

But, without the protection provided by Dauphin Island, he said, none of those environmental projects will work.

“The island serves a purpose. It’s part of the ecosystem. It is why we have the marshes and oyster reefs in the Mississippi Sound. It’s why we have a place for baby shrimp, fish, crabs and oysters,” Collier said. “I just want people to understand, if we lose the island, if it breaches, we could lose all that.”